New Publications

Well, another day has gone by here at the scene of the crime, and I have gotten one step closer to world domination. A lot of exciting things have happened over here in the last couple of weeks, and I’d like to share the good news with my blog readers.

First off, I’m very pleased to announce that I’ve written an article featured in the new issue of CADS, CADS 68. This periodical is edited and published by Geoff Bradley, and it’s my favourite place to go for all sorts of delightful articles on vintage detective fiction, crime fiction, etc. My article is entitled Was the Cornish Boatman Correct? The Post-Reichenbach Career of Sherlock Holmes. In it, I examine the Sherlockian Canon to see if there’s any truth to the old adage that Holmes may not have died at the Reichenbach Falls, but was never quite the same man afterwards. I’m very pleased with the way this article turned out, and I hope those who read it are as interested in the topic as I was.

But there’s just one more thing. Curt Evans, blogger at The Passing Tramp and author of such fine books as Masters of the Humdrum Mystery and Clues and Corpses: The Detective Fiction and Mystery Criticism of Todd Downing, has edited a new book. The book is called Mysteries Unlocked: Essays in Honor of Douglas G. Greene. It is published by McFarland and it is a tribute to Douglas Greene on his 70^th birthday. Doug has enjoyed a long career as an outstanding mystery scholar, the foremost John Dickson Carr authority, an outstanding editor and a fine publisher. I was delighted when Curt contacted me and asked me to contribute a piece to the book. My contribution is a piece about one of my favourite writers, René Reouven, in which I examine his career as an author of mysteries, especially his “apocryphal crimes” and Sherlockian pastiches.

Because I’m one of the contributors to Mysteries Unlocked, I cannot “properly” review it, but I truly believe this is a book worth talking about. This contains some of the finest mystery criticism I’ve ever read. The contributions are intelligent, insightful, and just as diverse as Doug’s career has been. Here are just some of the highlights from the book, delicacies you can expect to sample from a veritable smorgasbord of contributions:

• William Ruehlmann’s essay on Hamilton Cleek
• Michael Dirda on discovering John Dickson Carr, bringing to mind the sheer enthusiasm he exhibited in the Edgar-winning On Conan Doyle
• John Curran on Agatha Christie’s contributions to the impossible crime subgenre
• Julia Jones’ re-evaluation of Margery Allingham’s The China Governess, in which she commits an unforgivable sin: she admits to having made a mistake!!!
• Mauro Boncompagni straightens out the tangled, Keelerian web-within-a-web of authors that make up “Patrick Quentin”, “Q. Patrick” and “Jonathan Stagge”
• Henrique Valle’s look at an unusual detective story writer, the Portuguese poet Fernando Pessoa
• Essays by Curt Evans on subjects ranging from the nutty Carolyn Wells to the nuts-for-detective-stories T. S. Eliot
• Tom Nolan on the importance of poetry in Ross Macdonald’s The Galton Case
• Jon L. Breen  whetting your appetite for ten various writers of detective fiction
• Sergio Angelini (of Tipping My Fedora fame) on John Dickson Carr’s radio mysteries
• Joseph Goodrich presents Ellery Queen’s adventures on the radio, and includes an absolutely vicious letter penned by Manfred B. Lee regarding the show’s cancellation (seriously, this book is worth reading for this letter alone!)
• Helen Szamuely on the presence of presentism in supposedly-historical detective fiction
• Peter Lovesey on the origins of Eric the Skull and the Detection Club (with particular emphasis on Dorothy L. Sayers)

There are some fine contributors to this volume. There are Edgar winners and nominees, professors, lawyers, philosophers, biographers, a physiotherapist, a Pulitzer Prize winner… and somewhere among all these contributors you’ll find some schmuck from Canada. Seriously, though, it is an honour to be included in the same book as Jon Breen, Peter Lovesey, Michael Dirda, John Curran, and so many others. I loved reading this book, and it made me very proud to be a participant in this festschrift.

I have never had the pleasure of meeting Doug Greene personally, but we “met” online a few years ago now thanks to the Yahoo group “Fans of John Dickson Carr”. How did that happen? Funny you should ask. I was 16 years old at the time, and came up with a theory about John Dickson Carr’s The Burning Court all on my own, and was so proud of its brilliance that I simply had to share it with the group (beware, major spoilers below!!!):

Date: August 21^st, 2009

Subject: “The Burning Court” – Was Carr wrong?

MAJOR SPOILERS AHEAD!

I finished reading "The Burning Court" a few weeks ago, and the ending *still* has me thinking, to the point where I couldn't even start reading another Carr.

What I'm wondering is, could Carr have made a mistake when it came to the solution? I know it's his book and all, but who says you can't have a little fun interpreting a work?

The rules of fair play themself are violated by making Stevens' wife, Marie, a ghost who finally got revenge by killing Uncle Miles and Mark. After all, Gaudan Cross gave a perfectly reasonable, physical explanation for how the murder was committed. It would've satisfied anyone. But Carr goes a step further, killing off his detective and adding a further twist.

So, what if Carr got it wrong, and Marie wasn't the killer after all? What if her thoughts were really the mad ramblings of an insane woman who can't be saved? What if Cross' explanation of her upbringing WAS correct, and she had been "brainwashed" to believe Marie D'Aubray would reincarnate in herself?

Anyone else have any thoughts about this? Did Carr "make a mistake", or was she really the killer all along?

***

A couple of days later, Doug responded:

Date: August 22^nd, 2009

I suggested a similar alternate explanation in an appendix to the biography.

Keep in mind that Ted Stevens of Herald publishers (I think it was Herald) is still very much alive at the time of PANIC IN BOX C.

Doug

***

This was when I first realized that Doug Greene, the guy who wrote JDC’s biography, was part of the group! I was thunderstuck – Carr’s bio was one of my favourite library books, although I had not read any sections marked as spoilers that were about books I had not yet read. I quickly dashed off a reply:

From: Patrick

Do you mean "The Man Who Explained Miracles"? I read through as much of it as I could, and positively loved it! I admit that I skipped through passages that referenced books I hadn't read (I still hadn't read "The Burning Court" when I read it), but I plan to read the extra passages that I now can.

[I then added:]

I hope you don't mind my saying so, but after I read what I could, I hoped I'd be able to one day tell the author how much I enjoyed the book. It's really an honour to be speaking (well, in a way) to you. I enjoyed the book tremendously. Thank you so much for writing it!

***

Well, Doug, I’m no longer 16 years old, but my sentiments remain the same. Thank you so much for all the great work you have done throughout the years for us mystery fans. Thanks for the JDC bio, for the great short story collections published by Crippen & Landru, and for all the reading tips you have given me in the past, which have transformed me into the reader I am today. It was an honour participating in this project!

Why I've Been So Silent Lately...

You may have noticed that I seemed to leave the Internet quite abruptly a few months ago. One minute I’m posting articles and reviews on everything from Sherlock to The Shining, and the next minute I seem to have vanished altogether, with only a review of The Rosary Murders and a parody Top Ten Mysteries list to break the silence. What has been going on? Allow me to explain.

I’ve mentioned several times on this blog that I am a Catholic — and my faith has factored into my reviews of such books as The Saint Maker, or my particularly scathing reviews of such material as the BBC’s blatantly anti-Catholic Father Brown or Louise Penny’s The Beautiful Mystery. And for the last few years, there’s been a persistent thought in my mind that I should enter the seminary and give it a chance, and see whether I had a vocation to the priesthood. Absolute nonsense, I thought to myself. I’ll meet the right girl any day now and these ideas will drop out of my head and someone better than me can go to the seminary instead.

But this thought has been extremely persistent. And about a year ago, for various reasons it became clear that I could no longer ignore it. Try as I might to drown it out, the thought kept coming back to me, refusing to go away. And several months ago, I decided to see whether there was anything to it – I approached my diocese’s vocations director and started applying to the seminary.

The application process has been long and tiring. I’ve had to fill out many pages for my application, and answered what felt like thousands of questions on my psychological evaluations alone. I had interviews and appointments of all sorts as I scrambled to fit them in between my work schedule. But on Wednesday of this past week, it all paid off – I found out that I have been accepted into the seminary!

I’m very excited by this news, and I eagerly look forward to September and all the challenges that lie ahead of me. For now, however, I can take a breath, relax, and enjoy the moment.

What does this news mean for the future of this blog? I haven’t the faintest idea at the moment, to be honest. I ask for your patience as I try to sort that out.

"At the Scene of the Crime" celebrates two years online!

Wow.

Honestly, that's all I can say. I opened up a Blogger account and created At the Scene of the Crime two years ago today. Long-time readers might recall that my debut post was a video review, to date the only one I've done. It's also one of my very worst reviews, and I'm surprised that after a video like that I wasn't chased off the Internet by a group of irate readers armed with knives and pitchforks.

But no, the mystery blogging community is a very forgiving one, and I soon found myself doing reviews on a regular basis. I've re-discovered some old favourites, and I've found new ones. I became an avid e-book reader thanks to The Mysterious Press. I've gained an appreciation for subgenres that I may have marginalized before starting this blog. I got to virtually meet some authors that I've admired tremendously, such as Paul Halter, Peter Lovesey, and René Reouven. I finally met my match in Harry Stephen Keeler. I re-read the entire James Bond series. I've finally discovered a story about the giant rat of Sumatra that has left me satisfied! (Tune in for that within the next week.) I grew a beard and shaved it off. The blog went through two major redesigns. I even started getting enough spam comments to be forced to remove Anonymous commenting! (I apologize to all users who do not wish to sign up for a Google account, but the spam was rapidly getting out of control one week, and it was all coming from anonymous spammers. I think I removed all traces of their visits, but if you spot one of their comments lying around feel free to let me know.) In general, the last two years have been a bit of a crazy ride.

Thank you for everyone who stops in to read this blog! Your encouragement, as well as the discussions we've had (both agreements and disagreements), have helped to fuel my enthusiasm for the last two years.

Last year, to commemorate my one-year anniversary, I held a month-long celebration full of crossover reviews and articles. However, I realized that I had no way to top such a performance this year. So I decided early on that I had no intention to try. Instead, I decided to commemorate this anniversary in a smaller way. I began earlier today by posting my review of Jeffery Deaver's Carte Blanche, the very first James Bond continuation that I've read.

The second part of the celebration has been a long time coming: it's the second episode of Fair and Foul Play. This was delayed by exams and by the blog redesign, and I hope readers will forgive me. I didn't intend to have such a delay between the two parts of an episode, and it won't happen with the next episode. There might, however, be a longer delay between episodes, i.e. the end of episode 1 and the start of episode 2.

But to return to the subject at hand, I hope you will enjoy listening to the conclusion of the "mysteries in audio" segment of Fair and Foul Play. In this conclusion, I rejoin Sergio for a discussion that picks up where we left off discussing audiobooks, radio plays, and other mysteries set in the world of audio. Due to some tech issues, the images I used to illustrate the video all disappeared and I cannot explain why, but the audio itself is intact. I therefore suggest listening to this video as though it were a radio broadcast, which is only appropriate considering the subject matter. (And hopefully YouTube will be more co-operative next time!) I made some minor tweaks to the opening credits, but the show's format remains unchanged.

Hail to the Queen (of Crime)!

Devoted readers of this blog (all three of them) might remember a review I did back in April of John Curran’s Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks. I concluded the review by warning readers to keep an eye out for a review of the sequel, Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making. Well, it’s been almost two months now, which for me is probably a record time.

Despite all the recent Batman reviews and a very negative Ellery Queen review, I remain a devoted fan of the traditional puzzle-plot mystery, and one of its greatest practitioners was Agatha Christie. Indeed, until I discovered John Dickson Carr I considered Agatha the greatest. Which is why I was very interested in John Curran’s two books, examining the notebooks that Agatha Christie left behind. Agatha Christie’s Murder in the Making is his second volume and contains much of the material that was left out of the first book, Agatha Christie’s Secret Notebooks.

CCL. In which a picture is unveiled and a blogger reaches drinking age.

Before I say anything else, I’d like to turn your attention to this brilliant picture that was drawn for me by Daniel, a fellow Pole who goes by the moniker of “daekazu” on DeviantArt. You can find his profile here. He does some really fine stuff, and I’m absolutely delighted with this picture!

“Ah, but Patrick,” you must surely be saying, “that’s not all! Would you create a new post just to show off a new picture of yours?” I can only congratulate your deduction skills, for this is a post that will deal with several things at once. The first of these is, of course, the new picture, which will be displayed on some parts of the site from now on, such as the “Prime Suspect” page (which had a fairly generic and somewhat dull picture before this).

Well, another year has gone by and guess what? Today is May 14^th! (Unless, of course, you’re from the future, in which case, please let me know whether the public has had the sanity to forget the Kardashians, whoever they are.) And do you know what that means? It’s my birthday—more specifically, my 19^th birthday! For those of you who fail to grasp the significance of this, the legal drinking age in Canada is 19. So how about joining me in a glass of rough cider?

No, seriously, I went to LCBO just for these.

What does this new milestone mean? Well, for one thing, I am no longer saluting you with a glass of Perrier (which is the nectar of the gods, of course, but that’s for another day). By a strange coincidence it’s also my 250^th post! But more importantly, it gives me the opportunity to write a reflection on this blog… and I swear this is all heading somewhere, so please, don’t change that channel.

When I started the blog, I was doing it for my book reviews. I had been doing something similar for a while, doing a sort of one-man-book-club by reading several books and posting my running commentary as I progressed through them, summing up my thoughts in the end. Unfortunately, at times my fast reading pace meant that I would write two posts: one to announce that I had just started The Affair of the Abominable Albino and looked forward to reading more, and the other to announce that I had just finished the book and here-are-my-thoughts and what-book-should-I-read-next... A blog seemed a good solution, especially after TomCat created Detection by Moonlight.

But it took me a while to put the idea together—more specifically, it took an infuriating book to kick-start it. Readers are probably well-aware by now of the embarrassingly bad video I put together mocking George Baxt’s The Affair at Royalties. I have already expressed embarrassment at my line delivery and the way the video was shot, so I will spare you my detailed thoughts. But the mystery community is a forgiving one, and instead of being crucified I was welcomed into the world of mystery blogging.

Remember this monstrosity? It used to be on top of the page...

They were humble beginnings, right enough, but where am I, over a year after the blog’s creation? Well, I can now legally consume alcohol, so my first video is far easier to watch now… My book collection has also increased at an alarming rate—when I started out, I didn’t even own a single Paul Halter novel. Now, I have almost all of them, and have sizable collections of books by other French authors, such as S. A. Steeman and René Reouven.

There have been several memorable moments on this blog— reading J. J. Connington and Henry Wade for the first time, finding out about Margaret Millar (thank you, Julian Symons—and no, that wasn’t sarcasm), blatantly plagiarising Doug Greene in an article on Derek Smith and his novel Whistle up the Devil, getting to do several crossover reviews with other bloggers, contacting Roland Lacourbe and Paul Halter (and getting to interview the latter!)… and now I’d like to announce something else that I will be focusing on for the next little while...

That’s right.

I’m going to try my hand at translation.

More specifically, I intend to attempt translating René Reouven’s Tobie or not Tobie, a wonderful book I read last year which I consider a masterpiece of a detective story.

Why am I going to do this? There are several reasons. Most notably, I’m going to have several months off of school, and during my break, I want to do something useful with my time. Translating a novel like this seems like a good idea, and the only challenge left (once I’ve made up my stubborn little mind to go through with such a project) is talking to the people responsible to negotiate the English translation rights. But like I said, I can be incredibly stubborn, and I hope I will soon be able to announce something more definite on translation rights.

But wait! That’s not all! What else can I possibly be holding up my sleeve? Well…

Thanks to the help of M. Roland Lacourbe (to whom I will forever owe a debt of the deepest gratitude), I was able to contact M. René Reouven himself over the weekend! This was an incredible honour for me, as someone who holds the deepest admiration for the author’s work. M. Reouven turned out to be an extremely intelligent and kind man, who was only too glad to help me out as best as he could (although unfortunately he himself did not own the translation rights to his work). And afterwards… he consented to give me an interview!!! But that’s not the best part yet… what’s even better is that this interview was recorded and is now on YouTube (with the author’s permission, of course)!!!

That’s right, it’s a 50 minute session of me pestering M. Reouven with questions, which he kindly answered. After a while, though, I decided to abandon a traditional interview format, and the discussion went its own merry way, while I tried to worm in some questions here and there that I had prepared. The result is a discussion between two enthusiasts, as M. Reouven elaborates on his reasons for writing his new young adult novel, how he came to love mystery and science fiction, and what he considers is the greatest crime a mystery author can commit. We talk about locked-room mysteries, French authors both past and present, Jules Verne, Nero Wolfe, political correctness in modern day reprints, and of course Sherlock Holmes, whom we both admire—in particular, we spend quite a bit of time on the untold stories in the Canon that Dr. Watson alludes to!

Those who can understand French can find the YouTube video posted on my French-language blog, along with an introduction in which I apologise for my atrocious French accent and some factual errors I made in the interview. I also warn viewers of potential spoilers (the spoiler-heavy section is between 4:30 and 10:00), although for a 50 minute discussion, I think we did an admirable job avoiding spoilers as a whole!

But what if you do not understand French? Well first off, I must thank my lucky stars that you will not understand just how bad my oral French is. But rest assured you will not be forgotten: I will translate our interview (all glorious 50 minutes of it!) and will post an update when the translation is ready. So here’s my question for you: would you rather read subtitles on the French-language video, or have a text interview like the one I did with Paul Halter?

It was a true honour to get to talk with an author I admire so much, and to let him know how much his work means to me. I’m cursed with the knowledge that I can never write a fan letter to John Dickson Carr. I can never ask Agatha Christie where she gets her ideas, though she kindly answered me anyways in Passenger to Frankfurt’s introduction. I’ll never get to correspond with Edmund Crispin, and I can only insult Julian Symons posthumously (which is too easy a target). That’s why this interview is such a major moment for me. And I cannot think of a more perfect birthday present.

Thank you to everyone for checking in to the crime scene, because without you, I wouldn’t be writing these reviews. I hope you all enjoy the interview, whether you get to see it today or whenever I finish translating it.

"At the Scene of the Crime" Officially Kicks off its One Year Anniversary!

This post was meant to be made yesterday, to coincide with March 1st, but YouTube was stubborn and refused to upload the video below properly, forcing me to do so in two parts. Here they are now and I've managed to manipulate Blogger into temporarily agreeing with me that today is yesterday. So hopefully that all works out.

Welcome everybody to March, and here At the Scene of the Crime, we've got a special treat in store for you! That's right, I've pulled out the royal "we" as we get ready to celebrate the one-year anniversary of the blog! Technically, I didn't create the blog until the end of this month, but I uploaded a video far sooner and wrote some articles before creating this site. And so, as a reasonable person, I decided to simply devote the entire month to the celebration.

Below, in two parts, is a Q&A video where I take time to answer some frequently asked questions and some questions that you asked me to mark the anniversary occasion. I hope you enjoy it and I hope you will join me throughout the month for the festivities!

Being the Return of YouTube videos

Brand-New Podcast!

It’s rather fitting that, after my recent batch of Sherlock reviews, I participated in a podcast where the topic was Sherlock Holmes. Bill Lengeman over at Traditional Mysteries had a great idea, gathering up mystery bloggers from far and wide to participate in a round-table discussion. The participants in this podcast are:

***

Bill Lengeman – The head honcho at his blog, Traditional Mysteries, Bill specializes in brief reviews of mystery novels of a more “traditional” flavour, ranging from the heavy weights like Rex Stout to little-heard of books such as the recently-reviewed Murder in Pastiche.

John Norris – If you like your crime fiction with plenty of “weirdness” to it, look no further than John’s blog, Pretty Sinister Books! John’s blog is very informative and makes for great reading. As a fan of John Dickson Carr, I particularly enjoy reading John’s reviews of crime fiction with supernatural tinges to it.

Les Blatt – Les has had some experience in the realm of podcasts, regularly producing one at Classic Mysteries. Every week Les takes a look at a different classic mystery “worth reading and re-reading”, and he usually manages to find books that are either currently in print or easily found.

Patrick Ohl – I have no idea why they invited this derivative hack, currently blogging At the Scene of the Crime. When he isn’t reviewing books, he finds clever ways of being lazy, such as reviewing the three newest Sherlock episodes back-to-back and digging out old, half-finished, unpublished reviews. He didn’t even bother to mention his affiliation with the site!

Sergio Angelini – One of the most literate bloggers around, Sergio manages to write fascinating, enticing reviews at Tipping My Fedora, where he looks not only at books, but also at movies and audio productions. He’s also the current record-holder for most frequent guest blogger on my blog, appearing a grand total of two times and each time getting me to expand my mystery horizons.

Steve Barge – Steve, a.k.a. Puzzledoctor, is In Search of the Classic Mystery Novel and his blog is one I frequently visit. He’s the fellow responsible for starting a craze over Paul Doherty novels, and he’s come to convert half the mystery blogosphere to believing the Gospel According to Doherty.

***

These brave souls gathered together to answer the age-old question: have we seen too much of Sherlock Holmes? Will we ever reach a saturation point?

You can listen to/download the podcast by visiting this page of Bill’s blog. I hope you will enjoy this discussion! I had plenty of fun and will definitely join into the fun on future episodes.

A few points I wanted to make:

•  Yes, I am the mysterious “Patrick”, despite failing to mention my blog’s name.
• The quality of the recording gets better at around the nine minute mark—we had some technical issues.
• My point on the Guy Ritchie films may be seen as contradictory. But what I meant to say in my muddle-headed way was that although the films themselves may not convert many to Holmes, they proved that he can still be a profitable name and that’s what’s led to this recent resurgence in Holmes, which has brought several converts over to the stories.

Sherlock: The Game's Afoot!

I was very interested by Season One of the BBC’s Sherlock. The concept was simple: transpose the Sherlock Holmes tales to modern day. Sherlock Holmes now uses not only his remarkable deductive prowess, but he also fall back on the Internet, texting, GPS technology, webcams, etc. Played with admirable gusto by Benedict Cumberbatch, the character of Sherlock felt authentic— if Sir Arthur Conan Doyle had written the tales in modern day, this is the kind of character he’d come up with. He is a socially awkward genius who cannot understand why people around him see the same things but do not observe.

Martin Freeman played Dr. Watson, and in my opinion, he’s the best of them all. He blows Nigel Bruce out of the water. David Burke and Edward Hardwicke have nothing on him. He captures everything that made Watson great, and he manages never to look like an idiot. Holmes’ deductions are truly astounding, and Watson’s admiration feels very genuine without these moments feeling contrived. There is never a situation where Watson exclaims in surprise: “But Holmes, how on earth did you know that the only sinister-looking character with a collection of machetes was the one who decapitated Lord Bathtub?” Watson is an intelligent man—after all, he’s a doctor—but his intellect doesn’t come close to Holmes’. His life with Sherlock gives him stimulation in many ways and he develops a true friendship with the man.

That being said, Series One had a lot of problems with it. The first episode, A Study in Pink, was a very clever one written by Steven Moffat, with a lot of witty in-jokes for the Sherlockians. The plot was nicely retooled to make it fit into a modern-day setting. Moriarty was suitably hinted at. The episode was exciting. The only thing really wrong with it was the all-too easy ending, where Watson apparently learns (albeit briefly) how to read people’s minds.

It was all downhill from there. Episode Two, The Blind Banker, was penned by Steve Thompson, and was laughably silly. It took several pages from the Edgar Wallace playbook, most notably in the inclusion of Sinister Chinamen, as every Chinese character except one is part of an evil gang. It’s understandable, if not acceptable, to see such stereotypes in Edgar Wallace, but it felt shockingly out of place in modern day. But the episode was just barely fun enough, particularly in its finale with the unnecessarily-slow-moving-dipping-device-of-death.

Episode Three, penned by Mark Gatiss, was the worst of the lot. Entitled The Great Game, it saw Sherlock confronted with multiple puzzles, but the episode was frankly laughable. The plot never held water, and it is completely contrived from start to finish. You’re always aware of the plot’s flimsy artificiality, you’re never drawn into the story. I could go into detail about the plot's loopholes, but I will save that for a possible future review. But in the final scenes, we finally meet Moriarty, and it’s bad. Gatiss takes a very bad joke and streeeeeeeeeetches it out into what feels like infinity. The series basically wrote itself into a corner—it has the silliest, most laughable, and most unthreatening incarnation of Moriarty I’d ever seen. Its stories no longer held water. The only thing left in its favour was a fascinating premise and excellent acting from Cumberbatch and Freeman.

So I was sceptical for Series 2… Would the series continue its downwards spiral, or would it snap to attention and break the vicious cycle? Only time would tell… and that’s what I intend to do in the upcoming days by reviewing all three of the episodes from series 2. I hope you will all join me for this.

Crime Scene Update

As you may have noticed, production at the crime scene has slowed down recently. This is due to several reasons. One of them is that I’m gearing up for my one-year anniversary, to be celebrated in under two months in March. I’ve gotten in touch with several people and hope to again bring you all a special series of cross-blog reviews and articles. (I am also preparing a very special article that will most likely be published prior to the anniversary extravaganza.)

But I’d like to share some excellent news with you all. In the latest issue of Ellery Queen’s Mystery Magazine, I was delighted to find out that At the Scene of the Crime was mentioned! In the “Blog Bytes” article, author Bill Crider mentioned the blog in very positive terms and singled out a period where I reviewed Farewell, My Lovely; I, The Jury, The Zebra-Striped Hearse and The False Inspector Hound. I’m very grateful to Mr. Crider for the mention. And thanks to the Puzzle Doctor for letting me know about the article. When I fired up the blog, I never suspected that anything I’d do would get a mention in the esteemed pages of EQMM. It is a true honour for me to be mentioned there, and if any readers are on this site thanks to that column, I hope you like what you see! You can find all my reviews and articles under my "Criminal Record" tab.

There are a few changes that will be coming to the blog in the upcoming weeks, which I would like to take the time to address. First off, expect more author pages to appear. I am working on a page devoted to Margaret Millar, and other possibilities include Stanislas-André Steeman, Henry Wade, and René Reouven. I’ll be drawing biographical information about Millar from Jeffrey Marks’ book Atomic Renaissance.

However, the overall design of the blog will remain intact. I hope you all enjoy these spoiler-free reviews, and I hope to continue them for a long time to come! There is so much left out there to discover!

Also, I now have a Facebook fan page devoted to the blog. If you like what you see, I'd be deeply obliged if you'd "like" my page!

Death Invites You

The first edition of the book

I ever read, back in Grade 9

First there were ten. Ten people, strangers to one another, summoned to Indian Island by the elusive figure of Mr. U. N. Owen. That night, all are accused of murder, and one by one, they fall prey to a murderer’s ruthless hand, as “Mr. Owen” seems bent on killing everyone present. The motive? A mad sense of justice: Mr. Owen has decided that these people have all gotten away with a murder that the legal system cannot touch, and therefore it is up to him (or her) to play judge, jury, and executioner. And remember the madman’s alias: U. N. Owen… or, by a slight stretch of the imagination: unknown…

Agatha Christie’s 1939 masterpiece And Then There Were None was originally entitled Ten Little Niggers. The infamous N-word is an inherently offensive one, and it wasn’t long before the term was replaced by “Indian”. Thus, all the references to “Indian” were originally the N-word. But in my mind, And Then There Were None is ever so much more evocative: it sets the book’s claustrophobic, dark tone right from the title page. I picture a solitary figure standing in a spotlight, with corpses all around, and giant hand reaching from the shadows to strike for one last time…

Sto lat, to za mało…

It is hard to believe that already, after starting this blog such a short while ago, I am celebrating my 100^th blog post. But that’s precisely what I’m doing at this very moment. It’s a very special milestone and I’m proud to have achieved it.

Since starting this blog, so much has happened. I’ve started using my French by writing a French language blog (which has been inactive for a bit but will start up again shortly) as well as reading books in French for fun. I’ve managed to survive through a Mickey Spillane novel, I’ve somewhat revised my opinions about George Baxt, and I’ve gotten to appreciate the hardboiled genre a little bit more. I’ve learned that Henry Wade is not as Humdrum as some might think, that R. Austin Freeman is an extremely interesting author, and that for all his flaws, Freeman Wills Crofts can be quite entertaining. I’ve also turned 18 in the process and spent a few weeks in Spain for the 2011 World Youth Day in Madrid.

I’d like to thank everyone who visits the crime scene on a regular basis, whether you just read my critical analysis ramblings or post comments. I love reading mysteries, and I write these reviews in the hope that someone will find them useful, entertaining, or informative. It’s thanks to you readers that this blog keeps firing on all cylinders.

To mark this great occasion, I’ve prepared a special extravaganza for you all. Over the next few days, I will be involved in several crossover reviews with various other bloggers, readers, etc. Hopefully you can join us analysts addicts, as we take turns discussing various books/topics and celebrate the variety in what John Dickson Carr called “the grandest game in the world”.

The Great Blog Redesign

For a while now, I’ve been meaning to change the look of the blog. At first, I thought I’d do away with the purple and throw in scans of my favourite book covers. It wasn’t a bad idea, except the file size ended up being so huge, I was forced to scrap it. Then I thought of taking photos of my shelves— that didn’t work for similar reasons.

And then I thought to myself: “The blog is called ‘At the Scene of the Crime’…” Well, Golden Age mysteries and crime scene maps go together like peanut butter and jam! I took a quick look through some of my books and ended up scanning a few diagrams. Then, thanks to Curt Evans (who has uploaded some great pictures onto his Facebook account), I obtained a diagram from a book I didn’t own. After playing around with Photoshop to give me the diagrams in my desired colour scheme (I won’t bother you all with details), the result was the new background image.

It is composed of five crime scene diagrams from five books:

(1)      Paul Halter’s Le Diable de Dartmoor (The Demon of Dartmoor)

(2)      John Dickson Carr’s The Three Coffins (aka The Hollow Man)

(3)      Freeman Wills Crofts, Death on the Way (with thanks to Curt Evans)

(4)      John Dickson Carr, The Problem of the Wire Cage

(5)      Paul Halter, La Tête du Tigre (The Tiger’s Head)

What else has changed? Gone is the purple—as much as I enjoyed the colour, it was time for a change. The new colour scheme involves a dark blue-green. This redesign has resulted in a different look, a distinct one from my French-language blog, Sur les lieux du crime.

So, welcome to the new crime scene! Your comments are, of course, welcome! Keep your eyes peeled for another review coming soon!